


You Have Only Just Begun

by Aicosu, Alania



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: 2016 Reylux Fic Exchange, F/M, Force-Sensitive Hux, Knights of Ren - Freeform, M/M, Multi, Rey saves the day yet again, Reylux Fam, Sheila's the best
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-02
Updated: 2016-08-02
Packaged: 2018-07-28 20:01:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7654720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aicosu/pseuds/Aicosu, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alania/pseuds/Alania
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Force awakens. <i>Again.</i><br/>This time, instead of a life changing gift, it's more of an inconvenience for its chosen one; General Hux.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Have Only Just Begun

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Satan In Purple (purple_satan)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/purple_satan/gifts).



> Lani: I want to thank Sheila for being the BEST writer in the world and putting up with my absolute crap. She is an inspiration. THANKS SHEILA. HAHA THIS IS WHAT YOU GET FOR LETTING ME BE THE ONE WHO POSTS!!! *FLIES OFF CACKLING*
> 
> Sheila: NO YOU NO YOU NO YOU NO YOU NO YOU NO YOU NO

He tells himself it’s not distracting. 

They are smoke. Curling into each other. Pale skinned faces haloed in black fabric that swirls around them in a protective layer of secrecy, reflecting only each other. Two moons on the other side of his orbit. An endless rotation that he, their center sun, would never reach. 

Rey’s eyes glance over at him. A slide of molten gold that Ren’s dark brown gaze mimics, as if they are queued automatons playing on the same winded cords that intertwine their insides. 

Hux looks away from them back to the battalion below him. He counts the multiples of the soldiers instead, reminds himself that he’s not distracted. He’s occupied. Amused. Hux slips into the emotion as if slipping into a different colored uniform. He imagines Amusement as finely tailored. Like the tightness of his belt. It makes him smile and he hangs up Jealousy for later. 

“They seem diligent, Captain.” He comments. It prompts the man walking beside him into pride. He can almost feel it in himself. And he pretends to listen to the Captain explain soldier regime as they stroll the edges of the parade. 

Ren and Rey stay still, near the corner of his escort. They don’t pace the pavilion with him, his Knights. Instead they wait, and whisper. 

He tells himself it’s not distracting. 

The Captain asks him for launch dates for their new army. Hux fakes a pretty frown and names a date he knows the Captain would not meet, but will now. He marks a reminder to make sure of that in the digital datapad of his mind. He imagines flicking the date off the screen and sliding it into the blueprints of his new Empire. 

There’s more waiting there. Little blips on a non-existent star map, showing him the steps he was still missing. Anxiety rolls in and he folds it like a slip of paper and throws it away. Replaces it with determination instead. 

Smoke curls from the corner of his eyes and dammit-- it is distracting. He shoves his emotional wardrobe aside to stare Jealousy in the face and sneer, even as he does not turn to face the Knights behind him.

They are so in sync, so perfectly molded. He had watched it with a fascination and horror ever since Rey had entered their world. He’d seen their dance falter, stumble, before meeting in something terrible and beautiful. Something he knew he had accidently created, pushing them together for the forefront of his protection. For the ideal of his new world order. 

They are two to his one. A pair to his single. A number he cannot tear apart and quantify with himself. It’s a bleeding math problem marking the inside ledgers of his thoughts.  
A distraction. He’s distracted. 

Maybe that’s why it happens so easily. So quickly. So simply.

“For the Republic!” 

The shout breaks through everything. The quiet shelving of plans, the catalogue of conversation, the folding of his feelings. It breaks through the air, the crowd, his formation, his defenses. 

“General--!”

“HUX!”

“FOR THE REPUBLIC!”

The blaster bolt is so bright, so hot, Hux can’t see who shot it. It’s poetic in a way he hates. That he won’t be able to see the face of the one who murdered him. 

It doesn't surprise him to learn that time stops when he's killed. He considers it a predictable trick of the mind, to freeze him in the moment before it all ends and give him the time he needs to think. He's stared at the fizzled blaster bolt for several seconds now, fully expecting the white hot energy to sizzle through his body and bring an end to all of this.

But it doesn't. It continues to vibrate, just an inch or so in front of his chest, where he can feel the heat of it start to warm the skin under his clothes. The longer it takes for this stolen moment to end, the more doubtful he becomes that his mind is at fault.

The gasp at his side and the hands pulling him away were the final indications needed to push that theory aside. He's tugged back by the waist and the bolt of energy surges back to life. It streaks through the empty air and explodes in a shower of fire against the side of a stationed vehicle.

It leaves a black pockmark, one that should have painted his own chest instead.

There's a scuffle in the ranks, a scream as someone is captured, but he hasn't bothered to look for the culprit whose poetic anonymity has been stolen out from under him. His eyes are locked on Kylo and Rey. Absent seconds ago and now here. His. Drawn into him with a passionate gravity only the threat of death could instill. But they are no less frozen. No less lost in this confused aftermath. They would never have gotten to him in time, but it was clear they'd tried.

Thankfully, distance meant nothing to their powers. He rose his eyebrows, waiting for one of them to take credit for saving his life. He waits, ignoring the ashen horror in Ren's face, and the tremble vibrating Rey's lower lip.

They pull away from his gaze to look at one another, losing themselves to wordless conversation, and Hux's gaze tightens around the edges. When Ren finally meets his gaze again, the only answer he's privy to is a tight, nearly imperceptible shake of his head.

All Hux receives from Rey is an echo, a synced gesture to Ren's movement, leaving him answerless and once more out of their orbit.

They both look at him like he was a ghost, as though he shouldn't be there at all.

The pockmark behind him agrees.

The shooter is thrown roughly at his feet, and held by the neck to force him to bow low in respect. He fights with every muscle, but there's no real hope of one man overpowering the sheer number of Stormtroopers holding every inch of him down at the General's feet. A gloved hand dives into his hair and pulls, snapping his head up to meet the General's eyes, but Hux hasn't even turned to him yet.

He still waits with narrowed eyes for a confirmation that never comes. Bewilderment is his least favorite emotion to wear, so he refuses it out of sheer stubbornness.

"Who do you work for?" An officer beside the General barks out, taking the reins of interrogation in the wake of Hux's distraction. "Who sent you? The Resistance?"

Finally, Hux turns his head down to meet his assassins eye. The man has no intentions of responding to any questions. He knows his death is imminent, and he's prepared. There's only indignation in his red, blotchy face, and disappointment.

"They won't always be there to save you, murderer." He spits out, his words dripping with saliva and disgust. "You can't always hide behind your bodyguards."

He's right, of course; there would always be better chances to end his reign, and those seeking revenge would keep poking at the cracks until they found the right one. The problem with this assessment, as proud as he was to give it, was that Hux was finally beginning to suspect something else was there to protect him when his bodyguards could not. Something that had just saved his life, a moment ago.

A soft, thoughtful hum escapes him, as he bends to crouch in front of the man. Somewhere behind him, there's a surprised, almost scandalized inhale, easily ignored. He decides to meet this man's eyes, and use him to solve this mystery. So he tries, without any perceptive understanding of what he should be doing. Because if anyone should have the power to achieve greatness from natural talent, it would be him.

Looking into the depths of a murderer should feel more momentous than it does. But it doesn't. There's nothing there in vision only. Nothing but contempt, spite, and hatred. Ordinary emotions easily dismissed. He has to look beyond. As they do.

He doesn't feel anything. Not as he imagines one should, so he pretends to instead. He pretends to know what the texture of the man's mind must be. Weathered stone. A stubborn wall easily pushed aside with the right give. He pictures hidden shelves. Dust. Rows of catalogs and archives of information carded in anger and loathing. He shifts aside emotion like loose leaflets of unimportant paper, shuffles data, locations, and then-- ah.

A name pops into his head, spoken in a cadence that wavers in and out until he understands that it's not his own. General Organa. No one would be surprised.

The man in front of him, however, has turned a pale, greenish hue. His eyes are threatening to roll back behind his head, and Hux stands before any sounds of distress begin.

He knows he must be quick.

"Shoot him." He demands, followed quickly by the silencing shot of a blaster aimed directly at the assassin's temple. The only other person who could have exposed him drops dead at his feet, leaving a pool of blood that creeps dangerously near the General's shoes.

He backs away from it calmly, reluctant to let the soles stain with blood.

"Captain." His airy voice calls out, gesturing for the officer to come back to his side. "Detain this entire battalion, and thoroughly vet them, please. See that no more Resistance spies find their way anywhere near our ranks."

The Captain salutes him hard and crisp, but Hux barely sees it. His attention has returned to them, as they close in on him. He holds up a hand to stop them, and feels a little thrill when their feet freeze on the spot at his command.

Jealousy might have demanded his attention today, but it's Power that settles on his shoulders like a cape, holding him down with its pleasant weight.

"The Resistance is as effective as ever." General Hux calls down to the battalion, or as much of it as his voice would carry to. "We thank them for this reminder of their impotence. Where we march proudly into battle, they will slither through the cracks and still they will fail. Carry the trophy of this inevitability with you. Always."

He received a perfectly synced call to arms, the sharp roar from an entire battalion that culminated into a singular salute. It reminded him, briefly, of the curls of smoke in his peripherals, waiting as one for permission to return to orbit.

He rolls his neck, and swivels quickly towards them both. His bootfalls feel too hard on the paved ground. His mind is racing far beyond their reach. And he passes through them, without stopping, towards an empty tent.

"Follow me." He hisses, pulling them forward with nothing but the irresistible gravity of his demand.

\--

If there was any doubt laced through the rising pounding of his excited heartbeat, it is Kylo Ren’s bare expression of awe that chases it away. 

“Hux, please-”

It’s said with such knowing that a squeeze tightens in the General’s throat, shakes his fisted hands, and shatters a little of his composure.

“--tell me--” Kylo continues. Smoke envelops him utterly and Hux is almost left sputtering as Ren’s hands delve about his shoulders, claiming, wanting, begging. Ren can feel the start of it on him. The promise of that elusive magic he himself had never understood. Until now. Until his knees were weak with the utter weight of his own potential.

“Unhand me.” He hisses, as Kylo presses a cool nose and a hot mouth to Hux’s temple to plead in warm hushes. 

“Tell me how, what it was like-- tell me everything.”

“No, it’s nothing.” Hux denies. Their clothes whisper against each other as he tries to pull away. Kylo feels like a void. A void of swirling energy that would swallow this feeling from him. This power he had only just attained. 

“Liar!” Kylo gets angry as Hux pulls away, and turns to Rey, who keeps a quiet gaze on the General the entire time. “We felt it, Rey felt it-- you opened, awoke--”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” He says, just to stop the endless pull that is suddenly Kylo. The air in the tent seems to swirl around him. Magnetized.

“You’re feeling it right now.” Kylo accuses. 

He must have moved, or reacted. Must have shivered to hear another acknowledgement of the impossible. Because Ren curls a lip into his teeth and sucks with a yearning Hux has never seen before. Frustrated. The tent is hot as he watches Kylo get seemingly high on the Force. Because that’s what this all is, isn’t it. 

The Force. 

“Hux, let me show you--” Kylo whines. 

Rey stops him. Seemingly stops everything. Her hand presses flush into Kylo’s heaving chest and he stills. Hux feels everything settle, even his thudding heavy heart. 

Rey is a stillness that’s physical. If his mind is an imagined Star Destroyer full of his plans, emotions and memories, she is the space that surrounds him. And for the first time Hux has an inkling, a taste, of why Kylo Ren had been so addicted to her existence so many cycles ago. Paired with the swallowing abyss that Kylo himself was, it was no wonder they curled into themselves as he so often saw. No wonder they could not pull apart from their natural forces of nature. 

“Hux… do you feel it?”

It is a tempting thing to deny even if they wouldn’t believe him. Keeping secrets was keeping an upper hand. Allies or not, information, power, were assets to be weighed and measured. Calculated. 

Hux had seen galaxies crumble in the wake of those like Ren and Rey. 

He’d seen good men be used, and bad men die. And Hux could not determine which of those he was, in order to predict his own outcome. 

“Yes.” He admits. 

He knows, feels, Kylo’s anger even before the reaction flares on the Knight’s face. 

“Let me teach you!”

“I am not some cadet! Some welp! I don’t need to be taught!” Hux says and wonders if Kylo can feel his indignation. Hux wonders if he can see the files that the library of his mind unearth. He spreads examples of his prodigy, his talent, over the years of his childhood, as if scattering reports on a conference table.

Kylo’s eyes flicker and Hux knows he sees it. “This is different!”

“No, it isn’t!” 

“Please,” Kylo pleads, softer this time, desperate. A warm hotness rolls over his skin at the words. As if Ren is not steps away from him but close, enveloping him, pulling Hux’s smaller frame into the largeness of his arms and the endlessness of his robes. He can feel, know, Kylo’s lean form just by focusing on the sudden ethereal sensation. Can taste the salt of playing fingers on his lips as sure as he can hear the rest of the sentence spoken only in his mind. _“Let me feel it with you.”_

“Stop it!” The yell reverberates the tent. Kylo’s prying into his mind retreats like it had been slapped. As it should have been. 

He shakes from the feeling, angry for the wicked intrusion, angry that it’s even possible now, angry that it felt so indescribable, so unlike anything logically or precisely explained. It’s too much. Too raw, too real. The Force is now a realer thing than all Hux has known, and it’s.. 

No, not Fear. Hux will not entertain the idea of Fear. 

“Don’t.” He says simply. 

Kylo is staring at him with a wretched look of frustration. A lover scorned to something unrequited. Or an addicted man too far gone for his vice. 

But Rey watches him passively, carefully. A scavenger through and through, waiting and watching to see how something will work before she rips it apart. 

“I will not be privy to this nonsense. We will not speak of it.” 

He leaves the tent in haste, unworried over whether his bodyguards follow him or not. He cleans his conference desk of emotion, hides the feed of Ren’s trembling lips, shelves the records of the way Rey’s eyes hungered at him. 

But there is a new essence in his mind. Something without construct. A gathering dust field of magic that looms in the shadow of his conceived ship of a mind. A distant storm outside the hull threatening to change everything. All that he knows. 

Hux spreads imagined blueprints and plans in front of him to block the view.

\---

It was only four cycles before Hux realized that the Force was not something to ignore. 

There were small incidents. Quiet ones, in the private haven of his quarters. Broken glass and steam littered the fresher where he had focused to hard on trying to feel it, to touch and taste it and see how real it could be. 

His sheets were soaked with new visions. Haunting images of twisting shapes and colorless ghosts. If his daily reality had changed only increments, his unconsciousness was a spice-induced overdose of imaginations not his own. 

There were a few other things. A broken chair, a dent in the durasteel, a scar along his calf. Simple enough things to hide and forget.

But it was the bridge that had done him in. 

The bridge, the command deck, his home. 

Born and bred in black obsidian and flashing terminals, Hux had not thought that any force could ever reach him there. No magic, superstition or religion could ever touch the undeniable realness that was the hum of life within the power cells of each terminal. The timed clicking of regulated air supply. Or the soft hearth like glow of red backlights and turquoise screens.

He was relaxed. Empty. Willing. That had been the mistake. 

In his fourth hour of duty it had been hard to breathe. 

“H-hold deck as coordinates turn.”

“Sir.”

Directing everyone into new navigation for the Star Destroyer’s journey through space, his voice turned a bit raw as he called for reports. His eyes prickled with sudden exhaustion. A weight had settled onto his shoulders. 

But Hux had been high on the efficiency of his crew, and even as his voice failed him when he demanded response, his soldiers responded anyway. 

“Replace log loca--”

“Locations briefed, General.”

Data was input before he could ask. The repulsors were primed at simply the thought of it. A seamless, unspoken authority strung through each of his subordinates as he commanded them until he realized he wasn’t commanding at all. 

Near falling in a slump on the tech podium of the bridge, with robotic officers not taking notice, Hux realized he was pouring his mind into everyone around him, controlling them. He stood there, feeling the Force leech from him as he leeched from others, unknowingly creating the perfect army he had always dreamed of. 

And he wouldn’t let it. 

There was no way Hux was going to let some unseen, unexplainable Force take credit for all he had built without it. 

Hux had limped away from the deck, ripped his hive-mind control from his officers, and sought out a resolution through research. 

\--

The one (and only) thing he and the Knights have in common is following schedules. It made them easy to find, and easier to monitor when the curiosity struck. He observes them, one by one, and somewhere in the back of his mind he knows that they must be aware of his presence, but they never let anything on, and neither does he.

He learns, through time and observation, that no two Knights are the same. He concludes, therefore, that no two Force users are the same.

Auvas Ren is the only Knight who trains with her mask off, which suits him fine. He prefers observing them when they’re faceless, and Auvas is given the least of his attention because of it. She is the easiest to decipher, and the easiest to dismiss, once he catches a taste of the taut, simple strands of the Force leaking from her. She uses it like puppet strings, keeping tight hold of everything around her. Too tight, in fact. He imagines how easily all of her power could be severed in one stroke, and does not linger.

Tuija and Davik Ren might have been instructed by the same master, but their harmony lay in their differences, similar to the push and pull of Ren and Rey. They train together, moving in fluid sync, but Tuija is raw, biting anger, and Davik is the soothing freeze of calm. One useless without the other. He had no desire to be reminded of it.

Aziah’s grasp of the Force is slippery and loose. Ivo bursts like detonations, with explosions of power even he can barely control. Baniss is too animalistic and aggressive, Terrat’s mind is a labyrinth of insanity, and by the time he’s come to Ren, he’s grown jaded. 

He only dares observe Ren through security feeds, and only when he’s sure the man has lost himself in his training. Ren rips the Force from around him, tearing it apart for his own needs and leaving jagged patches behind. He channels it with raw and forceful emotion, bending the Force under his will until it’s his to direct, and loosing it with barely contained control. There's no method to his madness. Nothing there to keep him tethered to the ground. It's a wonder the power roiling within hasn't already consumed him whole.

He watches, despite it all; and as beautiful as it is, there is nothing in his dance meant for Hux.

He’s confident that none of the Knights would be of any use to him. If he wished for a better understanding of his own grasp over the power he'd obtained so late in his life, he needs to turn to someone willing to help him find his own manifestation, instead of any attempt to mold him into their own narrow pathways.

Someone fluid. Someone who would never attempt to force him into relinquishing control.

There is only one answer.

\--

If the Command bridge is the mind of his ship, he finds Rey in its heart. 

The engine room beats with the pulse of the hyperdrive. Red energy cascades down the walls from transparisteel panels like blood. Arteries of hot ion columns and durasteel plating make criss cross platforms. Walkways railed in warmth, hiding steam. 

It’s a perfect haven for a Scavenger. 

She’s slick and glimmered with sweat from training, and her eyes catch him in not-quite surprise.

She touches him, unphysically, with hesitance. Where the Force is ripped, pulled, snapped, shot, or threaded with those of the Knights, Rey seems to let it use her instead. 

She is sand, a roll of dust over his skin. A desert who would use what it could of him or bury him forever. It’s not unpleasant. 

They are quiet for some time, standing on the flat platform of the empty engine room. 

“I’m getting tired.” Hux says simply. He doesn’t need to say from what. He imagined he wouldn’t need to even if he didn’t have the Force now. Rey was always more perceptive than any other. “I need…”

Rey smiles, shaking her head. Letting him know that he didn’t need to ask. Or say please. Not like Ren might, just for the satisfaction of trapping Hux into dependency. 

She thuds a training staff down onto the ground and approaches. 

Her hands find him first and he’s shocked to feel them on him. Rey is not one to hold or claim. Not like the press of Kylo’s lips to his cheeks, or the Knight of Ren’s insistent hands, slipping around his waist. So to feel Rey’s nimble fingers pick apart his uniform and slide back his great coat, down the length of his arms, dropping to a undignified mess on the ground, he hisses. 

“It’s easier than you think. But you can’t ignore it.” She’s saying. Hux stands tense as she pinches the fingers of his gloves off, one by one. “I tried that.”

“No such luck?” 

His belt clatters to the ground after his gloves. 

“No such luck.”

Hux helps her shuck him out of his uniform, and tries to ignore the uncomfortable itch of knowing all his synth-silks are on the floor. He focuses on Rey instead, and the calm gaze she pins him with. 

The engine room is warm on his bare shoulders and in nothing but his undershirt, pants and boots, he holds his head as high as he might in full regalia and asks, “Where do we start?”

“It’s different for everyone. But I started by closing my eyes.”

She does so, and Hux watches her lids flicker shut and her face go still. He isn’t sure if she wants him to do the same, so he takes the opportunity to observe. The lines on her face disappear and her lips part. An easy breath releases into the air between them and Hux can almost see it. See it in the strange tingle that rises from his fingertips at the sight. 

The physical change in her is obvious. But it’s the other changes that Hux focuses on. 

She empties. As if there is nothing more to Rey than the body she inhabits, nothing in front of him but a husk to be filled. A long dead warship in the dunes of Jakku. The Force filled her as the sand might, smoothes the creases and weather’s the edges. It drowns the cracks in heat and after Rey inhales and exhales a few more moments she is full to the brim. Practically glowing. 

The Force can not be seen, not really, but Hux imagines that if it could, Rey would be hard to look at without going blind. 

She reaches toward him, and his eyes tightened with her brilliance. 

“Close your eyes.”

It’s wild at first. The ship of his mind is gone and he is empty in space. His libraries of records and holos, tables and chairs of memory, and the viewport of his world are all absent. There’s nothing but light, heady and heavy like a burning sun. His uniform boots are the only thing that keep him upright as the dunes of Rey’s desert begin to bury him as they stand there. 

Without the constraint of his clothes it’s easier to feel everything. The air, her warmth, the trickle of sensories down his arms and about his neck. He can feel a tingle in the base of his skull, near the clean edge of his hair, as if someone or something is kissing him there. Sweat.

Everything is Rey. He’s not quite empty as she is, he can’t let go of this imagined landscape. Of standing with her as her robes turn beige again. But he feels everything she is. Patience and hardness. Adaptation. Survival. 

Her hands raise, wrapped in cotton gauze dirtied by rust and wear, and press on his chest. He’s a submerged wreckage she’s found. Another means to living. Payment. Food. 

And then he knows hunger. Hunger that he’s not ever felt before. A thick, familiar pang that aches his entire body. He’s hungry. He’s been hungry. He will always be hungry. Hungry and lonely. So terribly lonely. Scratching days into metal, into skin, until it’s just a meaningless thing to do to count the time that doesn’t actually exist in this desert.

He buckles from it. Not the hunger or the loneliness but the absolute and undeniable resignation to it. The acceptance of being alone. Hungry. Small. It’s something that nearly erases all that he knows of himself. Everything his life was. Ambition and drive and fighting tooth and nail.

It’s too much. And he can’t focus. Can’t find his own memories in the repeat day Rey has lived her whole life. 

He thinks to tell her, to beg her to stop, but before he can say the words they are empty again. Solid. 

Breathing with open eyes and parted lips, there in the hum of the engine room. 

The Force is there too, humming between them and in a way that couldn’t be spoken. Hux understands a little more. The Force has always been there. For everyone. In its own way. 

“It’s just a tool.” He says out loud and is surprised at how shaky his voice sounds. They’re panting. Sweating. 

“Maybe. Yes. If that’s what you feel.” Rey answers. Because to her it is an explanation. A reason for adapting. A way to keep going. “It’s whatever you want.”

When Hux closes his eyes again his ship is back. The great architecture unfolds into the familiar angles of what he knows best. Imperial design and First Order ideals. He’s fully uniformed now, standing steady at the helm of his mind. 

His hand presses to a terminal and he clears his schedules, his worry. He turns off the feed of memories he stole from Rey, and the recorded reactions he had of her emotions. Hux takes everything away before opening the viewport and letting it in. 

He focuses on extracting it. Compartmentalizing it. He pictures the power as if it were mined. Placed in boxes, in crates, that he can count. Pockets of power he can carry like ammo and unleash with the careful click of a code cylinder. 

He feels Rey watch him. One of his containments beep like an alarm, his Force transforming into a data screen for a security system. He monitors Rey, watches her watch him as he folds every pieces of this magic into its own folder and categorizes it away. 

He feels her ease. Her pride. He files that away too. 

In the reality of the engine room, Rey raises a hand to him. A test, she tells him without saying anything. 

Her Force pushes at him, insistent, strong. But it’s restrained, or so his own power tells him, flashing statistics and data at him on his terminal screens. He sees its heat signature, tastes that familiar dust and sweat. 

Hux raises his own hand, one there in front of her, the other hovering over a control panel, preparing defenses just as he would on a real bridge, with shields and cannons. He stops her push, maintains his stability, pushes back. Everything a careful and precise tactic. 

The free flow of her meets him without resistance. She winds through his defenses without hostility. Praises him. And Hux sees how devastating her adaptability could be. For now though, he accepts her.

Their hands meet and his fingers lace carefully into hers. 

And Hux finally feels it. That higher level of understanding. From the forced empathy of knowing each and every day she cried on a desert junkyard. To the welcome he gives her to board his ship. To know his mind. To pace the walls and read his archives. 

“Hux.” Rey says out loud, their hands and eyes joined. Her voice whispers against his lips and the back of his neck. “It suits you.” She says, talking about his ship. His mind.

“Of course it does.” He says, talking about the Force.

They smile then. Two times over.

But something shakes them. Rattles Hux’s perfect architecture with the turbulence of a black void. It pulls, pines, and pushes in impatience. It threatens to swallow everything up and rip holes in the space they’ve created. 

Rey recoils from him completely, but just slow enough that Hux gleans her thoughts, steals the answer even as she says it. 

“Kylo.”

Hux follows her gaze past his shoulder, everything else falling away until all that’s left is the looming hurt that is the Knight of Ren. 

“She’s right.” Kylo swallows, his body a swirl of emotion that scrapes against Hux’s bare, exposed, skin. Kylo’s force is a void of space, an abyss of power and rawness like the pockets he leaves behind in his wake. “It does suit you.”

On the surface, it's clear that Hux's choice to let Rey guide him has torn a new black hole into that abyss, exposed and jagged around the edges. He feels Rey's hand against the small of his back, nudging gently in the hopes that Hux will understand what he has to do to make things right.

And he does, now. He feels it rise up around him, the ship of his mind, enforced with sturdy walls that can withstand the heaviest turbulence. If Kylo is the abyss, then his pain is Hux's greatest test. His grip on the Force must remain strong enough to weather a trip into that black hole. So he walks, and already he can feel Kylo fighting back.

Kylo's power threatens to tear him apart, piece by piece, panel by panel. Nothing could ever be easy, with him. Even without the force, Hux is well versed in that truth. 

He withstands the fight with every step, until he's face to face with the Knight of Ren, lifting his hands up to curve around the flushed, angry face of the man who refuses to look at him.

When he speaks, he feels himself settle, filling that void until the edges aren't so raw. A victory. 

"As yours does for you." Hux whispers, fully understanding the Knight at last.

And that understanding, elusive and impossible before the willing embrace of his own power, makes all of it worthwhile.

**Author's Note:**

> Reylux Fic Exchange Prompt:  
> After an attempt on his life, Hux reveals he is force sensitive and trains with Kylo and his apprentice Rey. Hux and Rey bond quickly, leaving Kylo feeling left out. 
> 
> Hope we managed to give you guys something you enjoy and thank you for letting us work together and create a little something for the Reylux fam! If you want to talk to either of us please come stop on by on Tumblr, we both love chatting:  
> <http://aicosu.tumblr.com/> and <http://every-day-is-star-wars-day.tumblr.com/>


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